Necrolyte
Rotund'jere

I made this guide because Necrolyte is one of my favorite characters. I'd like to share my knowledge with you in this guide. I hope you like it.

~~Totally~~ Co-written by DarkMedina.

Table of Contents

1. Skills

1.1 Death Pulse
1.2 Heartstopper Aura
1.3 Sadist
1.4 Reaper's Scythe

2. Skill Builds

2.1 Cookie-cutter build
2.2 Another cookie-cutter build

3. Item Builds

3.1 Starting Items
3.2 Core Items
3.3 Luxury Items
3.4 Optional Items
3.5 Trash that you shouldn't buy

4. Playing Necrolyte

4.1 Early Game
4.2 Middle Game
4.3 Late Game
4.4 Combos
4.5 Counters

5. Final Words

5.1 Credits
5.2 Changelog

1. Skills

Death Pulse is able to deal outrageous amounts of damage at team battles and also able to give a slight support to yourself and allies nearby. It also doubles as a tool for farming and controlling the lane. As for the downsides, it requires a lot of mana per cast (165) and the heal isn't much.

Heartstopper Aura is your passive Radiance, affects a huge AOE for somewhat of a low damage output. It scales very well with the progressing of the game and the total output this skill alone deals is spetacular in a team battle. As Necrolyte's focus is to stay active in the team battle as much as possible, Heartstopper Aura ends out to be very convenient, synergic and harardrous, the last to enemies of course.

Sadist speaks for itself: you benefit from killing units, no matter which. Those units may be lane creeps, enemies or yours(denies count!), neutral creeps, summons, illusions, even heroes, the only thing that matter is landing the last hit.
If you look with the eyes for which every little thing matters, then Sadist is a huge boost. If you look at all the variables, Sadist doesn't look too impressive. But Sadist is a magic skill, it is the factor that allows Necrolyte to rush tanking items despite being so mana intensive.

Reaper's Scythe is much stronger than what most players think it is. It's a finishing move, most of the time, yes. But it is also a disable that goes through BKB, even though the damage don't.
Being Necrolyte's only natural disable, it is a pretty expensive way of getting rid of bigger threats for enough time, well, at lest 1.5 seconds. Come to think of it, getting rid of Sand King, Enigma, to a lesser extent Shadow Fiend. Sounds pretty awesome for your team, it doesn't even matter if they have BKB, the only requisites are that they must be casting their ult and you must be in range, which isn't hard, it is pretty long.
It's worth mentioning that it also is one of the best scaling ultimates in the game, being able to deal massive amounts of damage, no matter how much hit points the target got, if they fall beyond a percentage margin of it, Necrolyte will pretty much deal with it and kill the target right away.

2. Skill Builds

I'll show you two skill builds. The first is the one that I use and recommend. The second is another build and you can use if you want.

Build 1:

1 Heartstopper Aura 6 Reaper's Scythe 11 Reaper's Scythe
2 Death Pulse 7 Death Pulse 12 Heartstopper Aura
3 Death Pulse 8 Sadist 13 Heartstopper Aura
4 Sadist 9 Sadist 14 Heartstopper Aura
5 Death Pulse 10 Sadist 15 Stats
16 Reaper's Scythe

In this build you learn a single level of Heartstopper Aura and then you max out Death Pulse and Sadist. The aura damage is low but constant, meaning that you will have an advantage over your enemies keeping their hp low.

Build 2:

1 Death Pulse 6 Reaper's Scythe 11 Reaper's Scythe
2 Sadist 7 Death Pulse 12 Heartstopper Aura
3 Death Pulse 8 Sadist 13 Heartstopper Aura
4 Sadist 9 Sadist 14 Heartstopper Aura
5 Death Pulse 10 Heartstopper Aura 15 Stats
16 Reaper's Scythe